The Incident Commander:

• Has overall incident management responsibility delegated by the appropriate jurisdictional authority
• Develops the incident objectives to guide the Incident Action Planning Process
• Approves the Incident Action Plan and all requests pertaining to the ordering and releasing of incident resources

In some situations or agencies, a lower ranking but more qualified person may be designated as the Incident Commander. Whatever their day-to-day position, when a person is designated as the Incident Commander they are delegated the authority to command the incident response.